Akan Religion

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AKAN RELIGION

AKAN RELIGION . The Akan are a cluster of peoples numbering some five to six million, most of whom speak a language known as Twi. They occupy the mainly forested region of southern Ghana and the eastern Ivory Coast and include the coastal Fanti to the south. They are divided into over a dozen independent kingdoms, the best known of which is the Ashanti (Asante) kingdom whose capital city is Kumasi in central Ghana.

Most Akan are forest dwellers, with yams and other root crops as staples; plantains, oil palms, and other trees are important. Cocoa, palm oil, gold, and timber have long been the main exports, producing a high standard of living. The pattern of settlement is based upon towns, each town being the seat of a king or chief. Village farms are set between the towns.

The Akan are divided into eight matrilineal clans (abusua ), branches of which are dispersed across all the Akan kingdoms; in theory exogamous, the clans are neither corporate nor political units. The local branches of clans are divided into matrilineal lineages or houses, the basic property-owning residential and domestic groups. Across this matrilineal organization runs that of patrilines, noncorporate groups known as ntoro among the Ashanti; in most areas these groupings are today of far less importance than in the past.

The Akan believe that each human being is composed of three main elements: blood (mogya ), deriving from the matrilineal clan and giving formal social status; character, or personality, from the patriline; and soul (kra ), which comes from God and is one's formal destiny (nkrabea ). A spiritual bond is thought to exist between a father and his child; the sunsum (spirit) of the father is said to provide strength and protection from spiritual attack or danger for his child. There is a certain amount of confusion and contradiction about the meaning of the terms sunsum and kra but it is certain that they are not synonymous. The kra is the permanent component of the living person. It is set free to return to the land of the ancestors only after death, though it may temporarily leave during sleep or severe illness. Usually the kra is protective; if a person recovers from illness or an accident he may give offerings to his kra in order to express gratitude for his purification and ensure further prosperity. In such a rite, he will generally be accompanied by a child who shares the same kra day, that is, who was born on the same day of the week (those born on the same day of the week are said to have the same kra ). A person cannot change his own destiny, though it is believed that witches and other jealous persons may try to attack a person's soul.

The Akan peoples have long been in contact with Muslims from the Sahara, but the religious impact of Islam has been rather slight. They were affected by European colonial powers moving inland from the coast from the fifteenth century onward, and by Christian missionaries from the early nineteenth century. The colonial impact was powerful, fueled especially by the desire for gold and slaves. But despite the colonial penetration, and prolonged exposure to different economic, political, educational, and religious influences, the traditional religions of the Akan peoples have persisted strongly up through the contemporary era. Although there are wide variations among the Akan kingdoms, there are many similarities in cosmology and religious practice. Mobility of whole segments of population and of ritual shrines and individual worshipers has brought about many common religious features throughout the region.

Akan religion has few important myths other than the one that explains the split between God and humankind. In this myth the supreme being, Nyame, became annoyed by the noise made by an Ashanti woman who was pounding fufu (mashed and pounded yams or plantains) in a wooden mortar, and he withdrew far away from humankind as a result. Another version attributes his withdrawal to the fact that the Ashanti have fufu -pounding sticks that are extremely long; when the women made fufu, the ends of their sticks hit Nyame up there in the sky, and so he went farther and farther away. There are also clan myths explaining their separate origins and thousands of proverbs and aphorisms suffused with religious referents.

High God

The supreme being, known as Nyame, Onyankopon, Odomankama, and other names, is said to be omniscient and omnipotent, the creator of all the world, and the giver of rain and sunshine. Born on Saturday, both he and Asase Yaa, the Thursday-born Goddess of the Earth, are formally appealed to in all prayers, although in general, it is the ancestors and deities who mediate between God and humans. Nearly all Ashanti houses formerly had a small shrine dedicated to Nyame in the form of a pot placed in the fork of a certain tree (Nyame dua, God's tree). Similarly shaped shrines are also found in other Akan kingdoms, though presently only in the more remote villages; there, however, the bowl in the forked God's tree usually contains a protective suman of one kind or another (see below).

Ancestors

The ancestors (asaman or asamanfo ) live together in a place variously said to be beyond a high mountain or across a river. They are believed to know what the living do on earth and may help those in need, or punish strife or wrong-doing by causing illness or even death. The ancestors of the departed heads of an ordinary lineage watch over and support members of that lineage; those of the chiefly lineage do so for both the royal lineage and for the members of the entire town.

Black stools, which are blackened with blood and other matter, function as shrines that act as temporary resting places for the ancestral spirits of a particular matrilineage when they are summoned during rituals. (Ancestors can be contacted anywhere at any time.) Royal and nonroyal black stools are similar in appearance and function; the former, however, are considered more sacred and powerful. Black stools are kept in a special stool-house within the family compound or palace. There are very elaborate funeral ceremonies for chiefs including secondary funerary observances and, formerly, mass human sacrifices.

Libations may be poured at any time by anyone to inform the ancestors of important events, but the black stool is the responsibility of the head of the lineage. Usually the royal black stools are cared for by officials who are not members of the royal lineage but are related to the king through the patriline. There are no mediums (okomfo ) for the ancestors, though individuals do occasionally become possessed by them.

The year is divided into nine ritual units (each of forty-two days), the first day of each being called adae. At adae some deities are celebrated and ancestors are venerated through the black stool which is cleansed and then anointed. All Akan kingdoms have an annual celebration, called Apo or Odwira, among other names. A complex festival, Apo consists of a number of ritual actions including purification of the accumulated sins and defilement of the previous year, anointment of the shrines of the deities and the ancestral black stools, celebration of the first-fruits (whence the name Yam Festival), and the renewal of the power of the king and thus the kingdom.

The Deities

The Akan distinguish between two main kinds of deity: abosom (sg., obosom ) and asuman (sg., suman ). While essentially the same kind of power, the former are said to be large and personalized, the latter small and not personalized. Nevertheless, an obosom perceived to be weak may come to be classified as a suman and vice versa. There are also thought to be small forest beings with backward feet (mmoatia ) and terrifying giants (sasabonsam ).

There are hundreds of abosom ; they may be invoked individually or as a group. They are said to be the children of God or God's messengers, and are identified with lakes, rivers, rocks, and other natural objects. Generally they are thought able to cure illness and social problems, reveal witches, and witness the truth of an event; at the same time they are dangerous to deal with because of their destructive powers and capricious ways. They are free-ranging but can be temporarily located in shrines in the form of clay pots of water, cloth-wrapped bundles, or mounds of sacred ingredients inside a brass pan. Ritual specialists who own a deity are called osofo or obosomfo. There are also mediums (okomfo ) who become possessed by a deity and, whether priest or priestess, are considered to be its wife.

Asuman are human-made objects in which mystical power resides. They range from small non-personalized amulets that contain magical powers in themselves, to more personalized ones that resemble abosom. In general, asuman are lower in the hierarchy of deities than are abosom and act as their messengers. They are appealed to for day-to-day problems, and their powers are said to be more specific than those of abosom.

The popularity of a particular deity will rise and fall. If it does not produce results or if a shrine official dies and is not replaced, there will be a loss of patrons and the shrine will be called dry. Powerful deities, on the other hand, may attract adherents across great distances. Aduru refers to both Western medicine and to herbal remedies. No offerings are made to aduru, and they are not personalized. While there is clarity of classification in the terminology used for these entities (abosom, asuman, and aduru ), in practice there is much overlapping and ambiguity.

In all Akan societies disease, infertility, and untimely death are of central importance. Herbalists are consulted for specific ailments and broken bones, but since illness generally involves the total moral person and is not simply seen as a physical condition, mediums are consulted to discover if the illness or repeated deaths in one family are caused by an ancestor, deity, or by other means. People of high status are especially worried about being poisoned by bad medicine. Witches are said to be mostly women who work in covens in the spiritual world; it is believed that they attack only members of their own families.

Christianity and Islam

Over the past century many antiwitchcraft movements have appeared and spread. Most notable was the Abirewa movement in the early twentieth century, followed more recently by the Tigare and other movements from the north. New Christian movements also rise and fall, attracting large numbers of followers who concurrently attend mainstream Protestant or Catholic churches (as opposed to Pentecostal or Spiritualist churches) or are adherents of traditional religious deities.

The growing influence of Christianity in the south (linked often with the expansion of Western education, cocoa production, and trade), and of Islam in the north have weakened active participation in abosom and asuman movements, and the latter have in some cases faded with the deaths of older practitioners. The law courts are now replacing the abosom shrines for the resolution of conflicts. Beliefs in ancestors, linked as they are to the matrilineage and to kingship, are more tenacious. It must be stressed that in no case has Christianity replaced traditional religion; rather the two coexist side by side in a complex and uneasy relationship. Because Christianity is linked in most kingdoms to education and, therefore, to wealth, it has become the prestige religion. Traditional religion continues because for most people it is perceived to be the most efficacious system of belief, one that continues to endow the world with meaning. Traditional deities are still perceived by many to be powerful and thus to affect people's moral behavior, while traditional rituals of many kinds are still deemed to be necessary. Kings, chiefs, and most palace and clan officials adhere to traditional religious practices as part of their formal political-religious roles. This is likely to continue so long as the kingship is retained even though some of the rites are condemned by the Christian churches.

Bibliography

The classic works on Akan religion are R. S. Rattray's Ashanti (Oxford, 1923) and Religion and Art in Ashanti (Oxford, 1927) and J. B. Danquah's The Akan Doctrine of God (1944), 2d ed. (London, 1968), although they leave much to be desired in both coverage and analysis. The best sources are K. A. Busia's "The Ashanti of the Gold Coast," in African Worlds, edited by Daryll Forde (London, 1954), pp. 190–209; Margaret Joyce Field's Search for Security (London, 1960); Meyer Fortes's Kinship and the Social Order (Chicago, 1969); and Malcolm McLeod's "On the Spread of Anti-Witchcraft Cults in Modern Asante," in Changing Social Structure in Ghana, edited by Jack Goody (London, 1975), pp. 107–117.